Examining industry expectations for content knowledge in mechatronics across career and professional certificate programs

Technological advancements, ever-evolving necessary skillsets, and an aging workforce have all contributed to a growing labor crisis wherein there are not enough qualified candidates available to fill vacant jobs in the manufacturing sector - in essence, a skilled labor shortage. Certificate programs (earned independently in a two-year college, while working in industry, or concurrently with an undergraduate degree) in hybrid fields like mechatronics provide a conduit for producing qualified candidates that ideally are equipped with the skills required by industry. However, it is important to gauge what industry expects from such graduates; in other words, pragmatically, what do they expect these students to know after completing a given certificate? The current study surveyed a range of mechatronics industry professionals on their expectations for content knowledge on a list of relevant skills for two different certificate programs in mechatronics (i.e., career pathway (two-year) and professional (four-year) certificates). Results showed that expectations differed for the two certificates on certain topics, especially related to feedback and control systems. It is hoped that these findings will enable the subsequent development and refinement of certificate programs to best ensure that students are mastering the critical requisite skills to be successful in their manufacturing careers. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)